Apto Commercial Real Estate Blog

As eager as you are to find a deal for your client and say hello to your commission, you can’t trust every offer that comes along. A lot of work goes into working out an offer—especially a lease—but that only means you need to be as prepared as possible as early in the process as possible.

Utilities can be a huge cost for owners and landlords. Even if the tenant is responsible for the energy consumed in their unit, common areas and general building functions can really rack up those kilowatt-hours.

Commercial real estate brokers can help by maintaining up-to-date knowledge of today’s most popular energy-saving initiatives, as they can be a huge selling point when it comes to closing the deal.

When it comes to selling commercial real estate, you can be just another broker in the crowd, touting the same properties as your peers, or you can take the opportunity to differentiate yourself. But how?

By letting your specialized knowledge help you weave a story that sells.

If you have even one broker under your management, or would like to one day, you need to give some thought to training them.

An intentional onboarding plan is a research-proven way to improve retention. Training brokers and establishing expectations from the get-go sets them up for long-term success at the firm—which in turn sets you up for success.

If you haven’t bumped into them by now—well, they’ve probably bumped into you. We’re talking about the droves of people roaming across town, phones in hand, in hot pursuit of Pokémon.

Pokémon Go is the augmented reality game that takes the physical world as seen through your phone’s camera lens and overlays it with a virtual fantasy realm teeming with monsters to catch, tame and train. It’s so popular that it’s already overtaking Twitter and Netflix in daily use—and surprising the owners of small local shops who suddenly have astampede of people at their door.

You don’t have to advertise Dos Equis to be the most interesting person in the world, but you should stay thirsty, friends: for more leads, meetings, deals. And to get those, you have to stand out in people’s minds. Whether you’re talking to a prospect, client or coworker, making an impression means more than a nice smile and firm handshake.

The world is shrinking, and geography has less and less influence on real estate investment decisions these days.

International buyers have been increasingly active in the U.S. commercial real estate market. Foreign capital currently makes up about 20% of CRE investment in the U.S., and China alone contributed more than $10 billion to the market in 2015. Some estimate that China’s investment in U.S. business will total more than $200 billion by 2020.

Many of your future clients will first interact with you by visiting your website. How confident are you that they’ll be impressed with your branding and also be able to easily sign up for a newsletter or contact you? Or on the flip side, can prospective clients even find you online?

Sometimes you pay to put out an advertisement on various sites, and then of course there’s the cost of your time to review resumes, answer emails, interview and train. And whatever portion of this work you delegate to your team is time they’re not working deals.

Simply put, omnichannel is an all-encompassing business model that integrates a physical storefront or business with a website, social media, smartphone/tablet apps, live web chats, call centers and any other mode of interacting with a customer that you can think of. It’s used to enhance and extend the customer experience in a seamless way across all possible channels of commerce.